Meet the college senior heading up Day of the Girl

Yesterday was National Day of the Girl, #DayoftheGirl was the second trending topic on Twitter all day, but there’s something different about the U.S. arm of the movement – it’s successfully run and organized by a group of nine girls in college and high school.

She’s an international development and social change major at Clark university in Worcester, Massachusetts and she heads up the all girl team for Day of the Girl. Eliana’s been involved with Day of the Girl since 2010 when she managed to get recognition from the UN who recognized their goal of bettering girls lives.

Eliana’s work progressed even further in 2013 when Obama declared a national Day of the Girl, and three years later it’s happening again, as yesterday the girls announced two new campaigns.

The first of the two, Menstruation Stations, is an appeal to make tampons, pads and other sanitary products freely available at schools across the country. Eliana explained that “a Menstruation Station can be literally anything from a machine to a jar holding free tampons and pads for those who might need them.”

Although it only launched today, Eliana said that they’ve already got a non-profit on board to help with the funding of the Menstruation Stations.

“This campaign should start a conversation around periods and break the stigma surrounding periods.”

Secondly, Day of the Girl launched their In Solidarity campaign which aims to train school admins to approach the topic of sexual assault differently, as well as creating a safer school environment.

In doing so, the girls have created a toolkit outlining students’ rights according to Title IX and their relation to assault and harassment.

“Although some of us are at college, we focus heavily on high schools and middle schools because they’re often neglected from the current conversations.

“We’re 100% youth led because it’s important to speak about our voices. We know what’s best for us because we can draw from our person experiences,” Eliana told The Tab.

“I’ve been a part of the movement over here from the beginning and it’s been crazy. We’re nine girls at the moment and our action really speaks to the power of youth voices.